A patient with a life-threatening health condition waited more than 16 hours for an ambulance that should have arrived in eight minutes.

The ambulance was called in the L5 area of Liverpool in November last year.

It should have been there in eight minutes but no ambulance crew was available for 16 hours and 34 minutes, according to a freedom of information request.

The trust later clarified the figures, saying it was an “anomaly” and the patient did not have to wait for an ambulance

The North West Ambulance Service blamed huge pressures on the health service for lengthy delays in response times.

The ECHO previously reported on the case of six-year-old Yann Mondon , who broke his arm in a Wavertree playground and was left waiting in the rain for an ambulance that never showed up.

He waited for nearly an hour in agony with his mum Lesley Harris, 43, before relatives took him to Alder Hey themselves.

Emergency 999 calls are colour-coded as ‘red one’, ‘red two’ or ‘green’ based on how urgently the patient needs medical help. Three-quarters of ‘red’ calls are meant to be attended within eight minutes, according to official targets.

The call last November that went unanswered for 16 hours was classed as ‘red two’.

A ‘red one’ call in April 2015 took one hour and 37 minutes to arrive at an address in the L5 area of Liverpool.

Another call to the L8 area took 42 minutes, while another to L37 in Sefton took 40 minutes.

North West Ambulance service responded to 69.4% of ‘red one’ calls within eight minutes in January, along with 63.5% of ‘red two’ – against targets of 75%.

A North West Ambulance Service spokesman said: “Over the past year, the trust has seen an increase of 11% in the number of ‘red’ 999 calls it has received and responded to 74.7% of incidents within the targeted eight minutes.

“Some of the data provided regarding the longest response times could be due to certain anomalies whereby the length of time quoted is not the actual response time and may be the result of poor data quality – for example, in which a crew might have not closed the call correctly.

“Due to the nature of ‘red’ calls, these patients do need to go to hospital and this in turn puts additional pressure on emergency departments, which can lead to ambulance crews waiting longer to handover the care of the patient and delays them getting back out onto the road to respond to other emergencies.

“The public can play a huge part in helping the health system by calling an ambulance for life-threatening or potentially life-threatening incidents only.”